History -- especially military history and alternate history -- is an interest of mine, so I'd be glad to join in a discussion if I feel I have anything worth adding. As far as asking questions is concerned, nothing specific leaps to mind at this moment, but give me time.
Since you asked for trivia, here's an item I discovered on my own, mentioned at least once on this board, and have never found referenced anywhere else:
A good seven or eight years before the Japanese began using kamikaze tactics against the Allied forces, science fiction writer John W. Campbell, Jr. had written a story ("Frictional Losses," July 1936) in which he described them doing so to help repel an extraterrestrial invasion. They supercharged airplane engines, packed the planes with high explosives, and rammed them into the alien spaceships. (The aliens responded by atom-bombing Japan so heavily that the islands essentially slid off their "foundations" into the deep water of the Japan Trench.) And yet the real-world kamikazes caught the U.S. Navy totally by surprise, according to Admiral Nimitz. No one in the Navy realized that Campbell had made a logical prediction, based on Japanese culture, of what they might do in a desperate situation.
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Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
Since you asked for trivia, here's an item I discovered on my own, mentioned at least once on this board, and have never found referenced anywhere else:
A good seven or eight years before the Japanese began using kamikaze tactics against the Allied forces, science fiction writer John W. Campbell, Jr. had written a story ("Frictional Losses," July 1936) in which he described them doing so to help repel an extraterrestrial invasion. They supercharged airplane engines, packed the planes with high explosives, and rammed them into the alien spaceships. (The aliens responded by atom-bombing Japan so heavily that the islands essentially slid off their "foundations" into the deep water of the Japan Trench.) And yet the real-world kamikazes caught the U.S. Navy totally by surprise, according to Admiral Nimitz. No one in the Navy realized that Campbell had made a logical prediction, based on Japanese culture, of what they might do in a desperate situation.
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Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.